Maxwell Street

In the shadow of the Loop's skyscrapers, there once was an open-air bazaar with sights, sounds and smells that seemed magically transported across time and space from some Old World village. The Maxwell Street market — its principal thoroughfare was just south of Roosevelt Road on either side of Halsted Street — was the ancestor of today's suburban flea markets. Yet they lack its essential ingredient: the pulsating energy created by near chaos that a Tribune reporter felt on Maxwell Street in 1947.

"Hawkers, spielers, pitchmen, and hucksters shout their wares while radios boom and customers haggle in a dozen languages. Merchandise drapes from awnings, spills over sidewalk...

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